Saluti a Tutti!

Greetings & peace to everyone.

I recently enjoyed 6 glorious weeks in Rome, participating as Queen of OU, collaborating with ED MONDO and playing with La Categoria dei Pesi Variabili. along with playing solo and in collaboration with iATO Orchestra, Michael Cooper, and other stupendous musicians. Ci sto bene a Roma.Photos here.

The Tiptons Sax Quartet finishes our our 3-week tour of Germany, Austria and Italia in Vienna this Thursday night; it’s been one of our best tours, ever!
We caught up with many friends, and are looking forward to our Midwest Tour
in September.

This past week, the Tiptons made 2 new recordings in Austria. First, we recorded in the beautiful Tebes Studio in Salzburg; it will be released in September. We also recorded our concert in a Benedictine Abbey, in collaboration with the 30-person choir Michaelbeuern Abtei Stiftschor in Dorfbeuern, near Salzburg. The Tiptons + Choir CD should be ready in time for the holidays.

We’ve spent many long days in the van; I’ve been teaching the band the dialect of ‘ab’, which makes us laugh & time flies by like nobody’s business!
Tip-tons = T-ab-ip t-ab-tons.
Sax = S-ab-ax
Quartet = Qu-ab-ar t-ab-et
I’m starting to upload photos here.

Friends! I’ll be in Seattle for June; on Sat June 4 Kultur Shock is playing a double bill at the Sunset Tavern with my lovely Ama Trio, to kick off our summer touring season (Balkans/Europe from 1 July – 15 August), and to welcome Mario Butkovic back into the band, and to celebrate my birthday!

The inventive and hilarious flautist and singer Emily Hay will soon be coming
up to the Northwest; we have named our long-standing duo WIND TALKERS.
We will be playing 2 concerts and recording a CD at LITHO studios in Seatle;
check details below!

The 22nd OEMF is going to be here before you know it! As with every festival, we need your assistance in order to pay our players, expenses for the venues, and all the other things that go with putting together a major event like this! Please click the link below to make your support known for this long-running musical adventure!!! We do NEED your help!!!

This will be the HISTORY area for the OEMF. Much more will be posted here as it is researched (nothing yet, but there soon will be) Scroll DOWN to find what we’ve collected from various net sources!

If ANYONE has the lineups for the 1st and 2nd OEMF events, please email them to me at the address below!!!

p.s. I am slowly making my way through pages that Aerick Duckhugger posted up (quite some time back), adding those schedules into our pages, and getting links for those bands that were on the schedule… if you see a band on any one of the schedules that is without a link, and you know what it should be… please email it to me at rotcod@rotcodzzaj.com

Jim wrote this for the 3rd OEMF (thanks to Aerick Duckhugger) for this!L. Jim McAdams

By the time spring of 1997 rolled around I was getting to be pretty worn out with regard to putting on music shows. In fact by the end of the third day of the second festival, I wasn’t at all sure I would ever want to do it again. While the music was great, I was enjoying it less because of the encroaching administrative duties. Something had to change, to keep me interested, and unfortunately at that time, my interest still dictated whether it would happen or not (which was exactly what needed to change.) I delayed committing to do it at all, and finally through a series of heart to heart talks with Barbara Zelano, the Midnight Sun manager, I agreed to do it one last time with the hope that we could set up something that would continue to exist and grow long after I decided to move on. Arrington jumped in and helped immensely to pick up the slack. This was really the first year that someone besides me was completely equal in the booking, management, press, and everything else really. I commend him on his work.

We put this version of the festival together in so little time I still get dizzy to think about it. Neither Arrington nor I had an e-mail account at the time, so remembering my phone bills also messes with my stomach. Oddly, the year we did it without e-mail, was the year that this web page became an “official”voice of the festival, and we have Dick Metcalf to entirely thank for that. Working on often inaccurate notes and flyers from me, he truly brought the festival online.

We decided to go ahead and do it in April, and since May (the month of the first two fests) was a little too close, we set the dates towards the end of June. The short period of time we had to work with did not diminish our ambition. We added yet another day, moved the dates to a weekend based Thursday through Sunday format, tacked on two matinee shows, and increased out venues from one to three. We also did a program for the first time, and found the Olympia community surprisingly willing to support and sponsor us.

The opening and closing shows were still at the Midnight Sun, as well as Friday night, but the Saturday night show was at the Capitol Theater Backstage, a significantly bigger space, and the matinees were at the Arrowspace an art gallery/music venue also a short walk from the others. The first matinee was an all local showcase, and the second was the first installment of what I hope continues as annual tradition: The Improv Hat Draw, a chance for anyone who wanted to take part in the music by creating rather than just listening.

Several folks have visited the INDIE-GOGO site for the Olympia Experimental Music Festival, but (so far) only ONE contributed…. please consider making a contribution. All $$$ gathered will be used to help compensate the artists who play in the festival! So, please visit and make your contribution NOW by clicking the link below (this is the UPDATED campaign link):